


The Alchemy of a City

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Good Hunting [15]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 04:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12247086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate: SG-1 (+Atlantis), Daniel Jackson, ghost hunters AU."Team O'Neill (now Team Carter) invades the Bunker with news for Team McKay (also sort of Team Sheppard) about the Lost City of Atlantis.





	The Alchemy of a City

“It’s been under our noses the entire time,” Daniel said, striding into the Bunker without so much as a by-your-leave.

Rodney, who’d been alerted to the presence of someone in the Bunker’s garage by one of Evan’s alarm spells going off, sagged against the wall with a sigh of relief. “Oh, it’s just you.”

Daniel was hauling a massive suitcase two-handed, the thing half-dragging on the floor. “Captain Lorne - sorry, Agent Lorne - has said it from the beginning. The Men of Letters crest is the Aquarian Star, supposedly found at the Gates of Atlantis.”

Rodney perked up, but then Sam Carter, Jonas Quinn, Carolyn Lam, Anne Teldy, Jennifer Hailey, and Teal’c Chulak came striding after Daniel, laden down with equipment and luggage.

“Whoa, wait, what the hell?” Rodney yanked his bathrobe closed tighter. “Why are all of you here? What’s going on?”

“Atlantis!” Daniel said, eyes alight with fervor. “I told you, I think I know how to get there.”

“Yes, you said that on the phone, but that was before Christmas,” Rodney protested. He wasn’t nearly awake enough for this. “Then I heard nothing -”

“As you pointed out, it was Christmas, and we were busy for the holidays. Now the holidays are over, and we need to get cracking on this and cracking on it right now.” Daniel paused at the end of the hallway that led from the garage. Team O’Neill had always been stationed underneath Cheyenne Mountain.

This was the first time that Rodney could recall them coming to the Bunker for more than a brief chat.

“Where are the residential quarters?” Daniel asked, looking confused. He was bright-eyed and jittery.

“How much caffeine have you had?” Rodney demanded, which was rich coming from him, he’d be the first to admit, but not twenty-four hours ago he’d been sharing a New Year’s Eve kiss with John under the glow of homemade fireworks courtesy of Miko, Sam, Dean, and Evan.

“Too much,” Carolyn said, frowning.

Evan came skidding around the corner wearing nothing but his boxer briefs and carrying his gun. “Rodney, are you -” He came up short. “Colonel Carter, Dr. Jackson.” He lowered his gun. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m still trying to find that out,” Rodney said flatly.

Belatedly, Evan realized he was practically naked in front of his coworkers.

Carolyn and Jennifer were eyeing him with undisguised interest.

Jonas smiled politely. The man was unnaturally cheerful. “Did you get new tattoos? Cool!”

“If you would direct us to the residential quarters, that would be most useful,” Teal’c said.

Evan nodded. “Right. Spare rooms. Only none of them are made up. I didn’t realize we’d be having any guests -“

“Show us where the linen closet is and we can take care of ourselves,” Teldy said.

“Of course. This way. Go back to bed, Rodney.” Evan cast Rodney a pointed look, and Rodney realized - the other team was here.

He couldn’t go back to John’s bed, and Evan couldn’t go back to Dean’s.

*

The world didn’t make much more sense the next morning when Rodney stumbled for the showers and it wasn’t just his teammates in there. Jonas was humming cheerfully to himself while he scrubbed his hair. Teal’c had his head bowed and his eyes closed and was either meditating or asleep. Dean looked grumpy and disgruntled, and Sam was nodding earnestly at something that Daniel was babbling about. John was frozen in the doorway, staring at Jonas.

Jonas caught on a moment too late. He waved tentatively at John. “Major Sheppard, right? We’ve never met. I’m -”

“Dead,” John said. “I saw you die.”

Jonas blinked. “What? But -”

“The resemblance is uncanny,” Sam broke in. “But it’s not him. John, this is Jonas Quinn.”

John swallowed hard. “He looks like -”

“Cousin Christian, yes.”

“I promise I’m alive,” Jonas said.

Rodney nudged John forward. “Hurry up. Don’t want breakfast to get cold.”

Of course Evan had laid out an epic spread for breakfast. Both teams coming together was a rare occasion, usually a special one, for promotion ceremonies and the like. But finding Atlantis was a huge deal. While Rodney was confident he and his team could find it on their own, Daniel had figured out the first part, and of course he’d want to be part of the search. Daniel was the reason Project Orion even existed. His endless curiosity had made the supernatural world and the Air Force collide.

Miko and Jennifer were chatting cheerfully about something or other. Jennifer was a talented physicist in her own right, had done her best to shatter Carter’s Academy records as she was coming up through the ranks. Vala was having a fairly serious conversation with Carolyn, while Teldy was talking to Evan. They’d been in the same class at the Academy together, or something like that. Were old friends even from before Project Orion.

John sat down beside Sam. He’d stopped by Rodney’s room that morning, expression carefully blank even though Rodney knew he felt betrayed and a little hurt, but then he’d seen everyone else in the showers and understood, and now they had to be so, so careful. Evan and Dean would have to be careful too, only with this many people underfoot, Evan would probably be constantly on the move.

“This is delicious,” Jonas said, brandishing a pastry in Evan’s direction. “You totally should have joined our team.”

Evan had smiled automatically at the compliment, ever polite, but then his expression turned a little hunted.

“Why would Evan have joined your team?” Rodney asked. He started to add, _Just because because you’re Team One doesn’t actually mean you’re superior,_ but then Jonas winced and reached down, like someone had kicked him in the ankle, and Carter and Daniel were both casting him sharp looks.

“Wait,” Rodney said, “you had the chance to move teams?”

Jonas pressed his lips into a thin line.

Evan cleared his throat. “Does anyone want something to drink other than what’s on the table? I have some apple juice in the back.” He started for the kitchen, but Rodney caught his wrist.

Rodney looked at Dean. Dean shrugged ever so minutely. He knew.

“When?” Rodney asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Evan said. “Colonel O’Neill made the offer and I declined. I’m flattered, Jonas, but I’m happy with my team. Very happy.”

“Of course,” Jonas said, casting Daniel and Sam betrayed looks. Which one of them had kicked him? Possibly both.

John cleared his throat. “So, Major Jackson, what’s the deal with Atlantis? Is it the last bastion of an ancient, advanced civilization, or actually the City of Enoch where angels and humans mingled and shared power and knowledge, or...what?”

“Actually it’s just Dr. Jackson. I’m not really in the Air Force.”

John frowned. “What? You - you _impersonated_ an Air Force officer? For my case.”

“Sam and Jack helped me.” Daniel shrugged.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Sam said. “Atlantis. What have you found?”

Daniel leaned in, lowered his voice. “Aliens.”

Rodney, who’d leaned in to hear him, drew back. _“Aliens?”_

Daniel nodded.

“But - aliens aren’t real,” Dean said. “I mean, the one time we thought there were aliens, they were just fairies. They were glowy, grabby douchebags, but they weren’t little green men.”

“Ah, but they were,” Daniel said. “Every supernatural creature we’ve ever dealt with -”

“Is an alien?” John shook his head. “No.”

Rodney resisted the urge to peer at John’s ears.

“Well, some of them are experiments our alien predecessors left behind,” Daniel said.

“How do you _know_ this?” Rodney demanded. “You said it was right under our noses the entire time.”

Daniel reached into his pocket and drew out what looked like the tackiest pendant Rodney had ever seen - a hexagonal blue crystal overlaid with a tripartite branching pattern in pewter. He pushed it toward John and said,

“Major, think about where we are in the universe.”

John blinked. “Me?”

Daniel nodded encouragingly. Everyone else was looking at John, Carter and Jennifer eagerly, Dean and Sam warily, but John closed his eyes, furrowed his brow -

And the pendant lit up. Blazed blue. And a hologram appeared in midair above it, a model of the solar system, glowing golden.

Sam swore in a dead language. Daniel looked impressed.

John opened his eyes and stared at the hologram. “Did I do that?”

“Now think of Atlantis,” Daniel said, and before their eyes, the hologram blurred.

When the image focused again, it was on a lazily spinning galaxy.

“That,” Carter said, “is Pegasus, a dwarf irregular galaxy about three million light years from Earth.”

“And?” Sam pressed.

“That’s where Atlantis is.”

Rodney threw his hands up. “But how do you _know_ that?”

“It’s not magic, it’s science,” Carter said. “We always agreed that -”

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet, yes, we’ve said it a thousand times.” Rodney resisted the urge to call Carter a dumb blonde yet again. “How do you know this is science?”

Carter and Daniel exchanged looks.

“While you’ve been out hunting, we’ve been searching,” Daniel said. “For the key to Atlantis. And we’ve had it all along.” He tapped the pendant.

It stopped glowing abruptly.

“Did you break it?” Rodney reached for it.

Daniel batted his hand aside. “No. I just don’t have the ability to activate it. Only people who are part alien do.”

“Part alien?” John echoed.

“We did some genetic testing,” Carolyn explained. “Colonel O’Neill has a gene that activates this technology. So does Major Sheppard and Agent Lorne and Dr. Kusanagi.”

“I’m human,” Miko protested.

Carolyn smiled gently. “Not entirely. It’s okay - these aliens, whoever they were, were close enough to our species that they could intermingle with us. As could their experiments.”

“Experiments,” John said flatly.

“Like - dragons,” Daniel said. “Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi was the name of a legendary sword that was found in the body of a dragon as a metaphor. Kusanagi was, in fact, the son of a dragon and a mortal woman, and he carried great power.”

Rodney remembered the dying dragon Miko had held in her arms.

“And fairies,” Daniel continued. “Jack is of Irish descent, and many Irish claim to have descended from the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were a type of fairies. Perhaps they were the ancient aliens in question.”

Rodney, who’d gone tense at the mention of fairies and very deliberately didn’t look at John, relaxed.

“So people of Celtic descent have this gene,” Evan said.

Carolyn shrugged. “Some. Lorne is a Scottish name. Sheppard is both Irish and English. McKay is also a Scottish name.”

Rodney reached toward the pendant, thought about the solar system.

The pendant remained dark.

“Winchester is an English name,” Sam offered. He reached for the pendant, but nothing happened.

When Dean reached for the pendant, it lit up briefly before he snatched his hand back, looking a little horrified.

“Don’t worry,” Carolyn said, patting Sam on the arm. “You and Dean really are brothers. Genetics express themselves in ways we’re still trying to understand. And also Dean shares part of Lorne’s soul, and Lorne has the gene, so -”

“Yes,” Rodney broke in. “Evan’s dedication to saving the life of his teammates is admirable and continues to have unforeseen consequences.” Then he narrowed his eyes at Daniel. “Is that it? Are my teammates and O’Neill the keys to Atlantis?”

Daniel reached out, tapped Evan’s Men of Letters ring. “This is.”

“The unicursal hexagram.”

“Said to be at the Gates of Atlantis,” Daniel said. He nodded to Jennifer, who flipped open her tablet, woke it with a swipe of her finger, and pushed it across the table to Rodney.

“What am I looking at?” It was a picture of some kind of low-budget Stonehenge.

“That,” Daniel said, “is the _Rionnag Geata._ Star Gate, in old Scottish Gaelic.” He swiped to the next picture, and there, carved into one of the stones, was the Men of Letters sigil.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” Rodney stared at the picture, his heart thumping.

Daniel smiled. “What do you think it means?”

“That stone circles are portals to other realms.”

“Not other realms,” Carter said. “Other places in the universe.”

*

Dean, Jonas, Carolyn, John, Vala, and Teal’c set to cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast while Jennifer, Daniel, Teldy, and Carter followed Evan, Sam, Miko, and Rodney down to the archives.

Evan made a beeline for one of the many card catalogues, tugged open a drawer, trawled through the cards, then shut the drawer and turned, headed for the bookshelves. His voice went faint as he ventured further into the stacks,

“There has only ever been a single definitive reference to the location of Atlantis in all the Men of Letters lore,” he said, “and it was totally illegible.”

He returned a few moments later with a piece of parchment sandwiched between two delicate pieces of glass. “It’s not a code or a diagram, it’s not - it’s not anything.” He set it on one of the research desks.

Rodney had stared at it a thousand times. It was a series of line drawings that were irregular and oddly-shaped and didn’t correspond to any language anyone knew, not even Daniel, and the man was a walking Babelfish.

“It’s an address,” Daniel said. “To Pegasus.” He was also poking through one of the card catalogue drawers.

“We know where it is, though.” Miko’s expression was wary. “We just have no possible way of getting there.”

Daniel made an _aha!_ sound and brandished a card for a moment. Then he handed it to Evan, who studied it for a moment, nodded, and vanished into the stacks once more.

“If ghosts and fairies and demons are capable of instantaneous travel between realms,” Carter said, “then technology exists that is capable of transporting us great distances. Demons can transport their hosts, so theoretically we should be able to survive that kind of transport.”

“But how do you know these creatures are aliens? From outer space?” Rodney asked.

“Because they come from another galaxy,” Daniel said flatly.

“Well, when you put it like that -”

Evan’s return headed off a prickly debate about what constituted aliens. He was carrying a heavy leatherbound volume, which he laid on the table beside the scrap of Atlantis parchment. “Here. The _Rionnag Geata._ Just outside Inverness.”

There was a lovely ink line drawing of the standing circle from the photos on Jennifer’s tablet. Beneath the drawing of the standing circle was a top-down diagram of the stones and their placement, with an ornate compass rose for orientation, a list of all the celestial events that aligned with the stones, and detailed drawings of any carvings on the stones.

There were thirty-nine stones in the outer circle, nine stones in the inner circle, and a single central stone. All thirty-nine stones had different carvings on them. It took Rodney a moment, but he recognized them. Constellations. Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius. Those had occult and mythological significance. The other carvings he didn’t recognize, but -

He looked at the Atlantis parchment again. There. One of them was a redrawing of Libra.

“You think the way to Atlantis is through this standing circle?”

Daniel nodded. “The symbols are some kind of combination lock.” He tapped a drawing lower down. “See?”

All of the nine inner stones had the unicursal hexagram carved into them.

“What are we waiting for?” Rodney asked. “Why aren’t we in Scotland right now, trying to get those stones to do something?”

“We’ve already been,” Carter said. “We tried an entire series of portal spells, but none of them worked.”

Rodney straightened up. “So you need our help.” Ordinarily he might have preened, but Team O’Neill asking for help meant this problem was a veritable Gordian Knot, and no one had a sword.

Carter met his gaze. “We do.”

“What else are we looking for?” Miko asked.

“Something, anything to unlock those stones.” Daniel scrubbed a hand over his face, and Rodney realized that for all his enthusiasm, he was exhausted.

“Evan,” Rodney said, “put some coffee on, and get the rest of the teams down here. We have work to do.”

*

“No one even knows what stone circles were used for.” Dean threw his hands up, spun side to side in his chair.

Somehow Rodney and John had ended up sharing a table with Evan and Dean.

“Were they temples or sacrificial altars or tombs or markets or what?” Dean pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

Evan refilled his mug of coffee, nudged it closer to him. Dean thanked him with a glance, sipped at it.

“Apparently stone circles were alien portals to other parts of the galaxy,” John said.

“It’s not an entirely impossible concept,” Evan said. “The Norse believed traveling to different realms was achieved either by death, Bifrost the rainbow road, or rune circles.” He tapped the open book on the table in front of him. It was open to a diagram of two concentric circles with runes written between them. On the opposite page was a diagram of Yggdrasil and the nine worlds.

Rodney scrubbed a hand over his face. “Old celtic lore also has mirrors as gateways to other worlds, particularly on solstices.”

Dean’s expression turned thoughtful. “Sometimes pools of water are used as mirrors. Scry in a mirror, scry in a pool of water. It’s not traveling but it is connecting two very distant points.”

“In _The Chronicles of Narnia,_ people traveled between worlds through pools of water,” John said.

Rodney fixed him with an unimpressed look. “Are we abandoning lore and history for pop culture, then?”

“I’m just saying, it’s been thought of,” John said, and then he sat up straighter. “Wait - wait! In the only book that talks about the pools of water, _The Magician’s Nephew,_ Uncle Andrew - the magician - invented rings. Put on one ring, go to a strange place, put on the other ring, return home. There was a central location for all of the pools. But get this - the rings were made from the dust of Atlantis.”

“That could be a coincidence,” Rodney said slowly.

Only Evan was already typing rapidly at his laptop. “No. No it isn’t. CS Lewis was the son of Albert James Lewis, who was a Man of Letters.” He spun his laptop around, and there it was, a familiar-looking record sheet for a Man of Letters, filled in elegant cursive.

Dean jumped to his feet. “Do we have his journals?”

Rodney’s mind was already spinning. “Go. Find them. Get the others to help you.”

“What are you thinking?” John put a hand on his shoulder.

Evan and Dean ducked away from the table, through the stacks toward the other tables were various people were hunkered down, searching for any way that standing stones could be used to travel to a new world.

“Pop culture. Something I read as a child. Standing stones. Used for time travel,” Rodney said. It was just on the tip of his tongue.

John said, a little ruefully, _“A Dragonfly In Amber.”_

“Yes. The one lady - she could just step through time. But the other lady, she thought you needed -” Rodney made a rolling gesture for John to continue.

Realization crossed John’s face. “Human sacrifice.”

Rodney nodded. “Dean said it earlier. We don’t know what standing circles were used for, but some of them did show signs of human remains, possibly from human sacrifice.”

“We can’t sacrifice another human,” John said in a low voice.

“If what Daniel is saying is true,” Rodney said in an equally low voice, “these space-traveling aliens weren’t human. When they weren’t deigning to breed with us, they were probably deigning to kill us.”

John’s gaze turned bleak. “I’m not human.”

“Yes you are,” Rodney hissed. “You’re just - not _all_ human.”

It was Jonas who came hurrying through the stacks with an armful of journals. “I found them. Albert James Lewis’s study journals.” He plunked them down on the table.

Miko was close behind with her own armful of journals. She was followed by Jennifer and Sam.

Daniel rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s get cracking.”

*

“Got it!” Vala hoisted a little journal high over her head.

Several people had fallen asleep, were jolted awake.

Even Rodney, who’d had more cups of coffee than Carolyn approved of, was flagging. “Got what?”

“A theory on how to activate a ring of standing stones to get to Atlantis.” Vala hurried over to Rodney, plunked the journal down on the table so he could see.

Carter and Daniel were peering over his shoulders immediately.

Rodney studied the diagram. Lewis had identified the _Rionnag Gaeta_ as the best option for activating what he thought was a spell to open a portal to Atlantis. It involved connecting all of the appropriate outer stones through the inner stones in a specific order so that seven of the inner stones acted as the vertices of a unicursal hexagram and one of the biggest points of the hexagram landed on the stone called the Point of Origin.

Once the stones were connected appropriately, the entire portal had to be powered up with - a human sacrifice.

According to a further records search by Jennifer and Jonas, Lewis had presented his research to the Leadership but they’d rejected all requests to pursue it due to the human sacrifice component. They’d also gone to such great lengths to bury it that they’d expelled him from the Men of Letters and also deprived his sons of their legacies.

Apparently he’d told his sons some of what he knew anyway.

“There’s one last note,” Jennifer said. She flipped several pages past the detailed diagrams of the activation spell, tapped five lines of neat cursive. _“Earth, water, fire air, Met together in a garden fair -”_

“I know this,” Teal’c said. “It is from a song. _Put in a basket bound with skin, If you answer this riddle, You’ll never begin.”_

“That’s not a folk song.” Daniel frowned.

Carter huffed. “Well, it’s not a traditional folk song. It’s from the late sixties. My older cousins used to get stoned to it.”

“Apparently we are taking cues from pop culture,” Rodney said with a sigh.

“What’s the answer to the riddle?” Jonas asked.

“A human. The _garden fair_ is obviously a reference to the Garden of Eden.” Daniel shook his head, expression grim. “Ancient cultures believed in the four elements - earth, water, fire, air or wind. Sometimes a fifth element, like ether, which was invisible and supernatural. It’s where the word _quintessence_ comes from. It gave things life. It was like -”

“A soul,” Evan said quietly.

Daniel nodded.

“So we need a human sacrifice to power this after all.” Carter’s expression was equally grim.

Rodney glanced at his watch, winced.

“Maybe not,” John said.

Rodney looked at him. “What?”

“You said it yourself - magic is just science we don’t understand. These aliens - no, they weren’t human, but they were close enough to human. They had crazy advanced tech for interstellar travel.” John’s eyes lit up, and he was gathering speed. “What if we can _make_ a human, or something like it, to power the spell? Like - cloning. Or a kind of homunculus.”

Teldy said, “Some Renaissance philosophers believed that the aim of alchemy was not chrysopoeia but the creation of artificial life.”

Dean blinked. “Chryso what now?”

“Turning things into gold,” Evan murmured.

“Oh.”

“So we need to make a homunculus to power the spell to open the portal,” Jonas said.

Carter winced. “Well, when you put it like that -”

Jonas shook his head. “I’m not trying to make fun of anyone. Just to be clear. Because I have an idea.”

“What kind of idea?” Rodney asked.

Jonas raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hear me out.”

*

It was practically dawn when everyone dispersed and went to bed to sleep on Jonas’s suggestion.

Rodney was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, mind spinning and spinning and spinning. Aliens were real, had super-advanced tech, and the only way to get to the rest of it was to go on a prolonged hunt, engage in some _alchemy_ (which deeply offended his scientific sensibilities), and then hope and pray.

He was thinking of all the reasons Jonas’s plan was a superlative waste of time, but he couldn’t think of any better ideas, because Atlantis had been his goal from day one, and then his door opened.

He tensed, listened. Should he go for his gun?

But it was John, sliding into his room, silent as a cat. He closed the door behind him, locked it, and eased onto the bed beside Rodney, stretched out beside him.

“Hey,” he said softly, pressed a kiss to Rodney’s jaw. “You’re thinking too much. Stop it. Sleep.”

“I’ll try,” Rodney replied, kissed him back. He didn’t say, _It’ll be easier now that you’re here. Missed you last night._

John fell asleep with that uncanny soldier speed, and Rodney watched him, studied the fine lines of his face, the fae-like shape of his ear, and wondered if the aliens they would meet on the other side of the portal would be just as beautiful, just as brave, just as brilliant.

Dare Rodney reach for the sky, for the stars, for Atlantis?

He curled an arm around John’s waist and held him close.

Yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Also written for the Aliens day of the Shoobie Monster Fest.


End file.
